A Meal of Thorns

"If KSR could just write pamphlets!" Noted SF scholar Gerry Canavan joins to discuss The Voice of the Dolphins, a collection of science fiction stories with extremely pointed politics from physicist Leo Szilard. Podcasts, reviews, interviews, essays, and more at the Ancillary Review of Books. Please consider supporting ARB’s Patreon! Guest: Gerry Canavan Title: The Voice of the Dolphins by Leo Szilard Host:Jake Casella Brookins Music byGiselle Gabrielle Garcia Artwork byRob Patterson Opening poem by Bhartṛhari, translated by John Brough References: The podcast(s) Grad School Vonnegut/Grad School Achebe with Aaron Bady The Science Fiction Research Association (SFRA) J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of The Rings David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest qntm’s There Is No Antimimetics Division & “Lena” The SCP Foundation “Filing the serial numbers off”; see for instance Jenny Hamilton’s piece at Reactor 50 Shades of Grey by E.L. James Buffy the Vampire Slayer Dracula by Bram Stoker Dave Eggers The Shelved by Genre podcast, specifically the Tolkien season Rick and Morty The “Oppenheimer moment” of Christopher Nolan’s film, etc. Fred Hoyle's The Black Cloud Cixin Liu's The Three-Body Problem, translated by Ken Liu Cameron Kunzelman episode on Venomous Lumpsucker Hilary Strang episode on Aurora H.G. Wells, Olaf Stapledon, Asimov Readercon Kim Stanley Robinson’s The Ministry for the Future and the Science in the Capitol trilogy (re-edited as The Green Earth) Dave, directed by Ivan Reitman Neal Stephenson Andreas Malm's How To Blow Up A Pipeline "The Mined Cities" KSR's "The Lucky Strike" Timothy Morton Cory Doctorow "My Trial As A War Criminal" "The Mark Gable Foundation" William Tenn's "Winthrop Was Stubborn" Washington Irving’s “Rip Van Winkle” Walt Disney cryogenic preservation urban legends CIA Simple Sabotage Field Manual Pope Leo's encyclical on AI “Nightmare for Future Reference” by Stephen Vincent Benet "Kathy and the Bear" "Calling All Stars" "Report on Grand Central" "They're Made Out Of Meat" by Terry Bisson "Epilogue" by Poul Anderson Ted Chiang's “Exhalation” Bo-Young Kim's On the Origin of Species Carl Sagan's Pale Blue Dot Star Trek's Prime Directive Daystrom Institute on Reddit Critical Star Trek Studies "Report on Grand Central" Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid's Tale & The Testaments Gene Wolfe, Ursula K. Le Guin Shelved by Genre episode on Tolkien's appendices to LOTR Dune by Frank Herbert Watchmen by Alan Moore & Dave Gibbons Le Guin’s The Lathe Of Heaven Stephenson’s Anathem Gerry's bluesky

"I don't know what planet they're on, but I know about the earrings!” We’ve got a very unusual space opera to read through this time around, one that takes questions of empire and identity to interesting places; critic and editor Alexandra Pierce joins to discuss. Podcasts, reviews, interviews, essays, and more at the Ancillary Review of Books. Please consider supporting ARB’s Patreon! Guest: Alexandra Pierce Title: Revenant Gun by Yoon Ha Lee Host:Jake Casella Brookins Music byGiselle Gabrielle Garcia Artwork byRob Patterson Opening poem by Bhartṛhari, translated by John Brough References: 2026 Le Guin Prize Shortlist episode with Roseanna Pendlebury Call and Response by Christopher Caldwell The Crawford, Ignyte, and British Fantasy awards Ian Mond’s episode on Tiny Deaths Wickhills by Premee Mohamed Behind the Gate by Amparo Dávila, translated by Audrey Harris and Matthew Gleeson Ninefox Gambit & The Raven Stratagem Skyrim & Baldur's Gate 3 C.J. Cherryh, Vernor Vinge, David Brin Cherryh’s The Faded Sun The New Weid & Grimdark Ann Leckie's Imperial Radch books Arkady Martine’s A Memory Called Empire Seth Dickinson’s The Traitor Baru Cormorant Terry Pratchett's Discworld Martha Well’s Murderbot Jeph Jacques’ Questionable Content Katherine Addison’s The Goblin Emperor Karl Ove Knausgård Star Wars Ursula Le Guin’s “The One Who Walk Away from Omelas” & The Dispossessed Orson Scott Card’s Ender's Game Frank Herbert’s Dune Yoon Ha Lee's new book, Code & Codex, & Alexandra's review Greg Egan Speculative Insight

Only in its 5th year of operation, the Le Guin Fiction prize has already become something of a critical darling, with very interesting shortlists and winners that rarely overlap with other genre awards. Critic and reviewer Roseanna Pendlebury returns to the podcast to share opinions and insights on the nine books on this year’s list. Podcasts, reviews, interviews, essays, and more at the Ancillary Review of Books. Please consider supporting ARB’s Patreon! Guest: Roseanna Pendlebury Titles: The Ursula K. Le Guin Fiction Prize Shortlist, 2026 Audition by Pip Adam (Coffee House Press) Sunward by William Alexander (Saga Press) Call and Response by Christopher Caldwell (Neon Hemlock) Midnight Timetable by Bora Chung, translated by Anton Hur (Algonquin) The Works of Vermin by Hiron Ennes (Tor Books) Notes from a Regicide by Isaac Fellman (Tor Books) Mad Sisters of Esi by Tashan Mehta (DAW Books) One Message Remains by Premee Mohamed (Psychopomp) Slow Gods by Claire North (Orbit) Host:Jake Casella Brookins Music byGiselle Gabrielle Garcia Artwork byRob Patterson Opening poem by Bhartṛhari, translated by John Brough References: C.J. Cherryh’s Gate of Ivrel Eastercon Toshiyuki Kusakihara’s Fire Emblem: Fortune's Weave LA Worldcon Hugo Awards Clarke Awards Otherwise Awards Olga Ravn's The Employees (AMOT episode) Stanislaw Lem The End of Everything by M. John Harrison Iain M. Banks …as opposed to Banksy Niall Harrison Ann Leckie Paradox’s Stellaris Becky Chambers Martha Wells' Murderbot series “squeecore”, originally proposed on the Rite Gud podcast; elaborated a bit in Simon McNeil’s “Notes on Squeecore”  Elizabeth Sandifer’s idea of "torwave" T. Kingfisher's Astarion (and bizarre discourse thereon) Phobos Sarah Palin Arturo Serrano Akwaeke Emezi's Freshwater Oliver Langmead AMOT’s First Episode with Dan Hartland China Miéville’s Bas-Lag trilogy Alex Pheby’s Cities of the Weft K.J. Bishops’s The Etched City Rebecca Roanhorse Susanna Clarke’s Piranesi (AMOT episode) Elwin Cotman’s work, eg Weird Black Girls Le Guin’s Changing Planes In Your Spare Time, a podcast where various people read entries from Le Guin’s blog Mark Z. Danielewski’s House of Leaves Premee Mohamed’s The Siege of Burning Grass Sarah Mueller's The Bone Orchards Ursula Whitcher's North Continent Ribbon Adrian Tchaikovsky's Tyrant Philosophers Le Guin’s Four/Five Ways to Forgiveness & The Word for World Is Forest A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine Gene Wolfe & Harlan Ellison Colson Whitehead & Marlon James Le Guin (and Virginia Woolf), “Science Fiction and Mrs. Brown” Frodo & Sam from Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings Roseanna & Casella’s AMOT discussion of Fellman’s Dead Collections Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest The Mulai by Munir Hachemi, translated by Julia Sanches Fitzcarraldo office shoot Nerds of a Feather Small Press Dispatch series at ARB Roseanna's blog & bluesky Roseanna & Dan Hartland discussing the Clarke shortlist at NoAF

Out of print for the greater part of the 20th century, Hopkins’ Of One Blood looks a lot like Afro-futurism, using ancient Ethiopian technology and the new science of mesmerism to think about racial politics. But it’s actually a bit stranger than that—Garret Bridger Gilmore returns to walk us through some of the novel’s contexts and theories. Podcasts, reviews, interviews, essays, and more at the Ancillary Review of Books. Please consider supporting ARB’s Patreon! Guest: Garret Bridger Gilmore Title: Of One Blood, or, The Hidden Self by Pauline E. Hopkins Host:Jake Casella Brookins Music byGiselle Gabrielle Garcia Artwork byRob Patterson Opening poem by Bhartṛhari, translated by John Brough References: Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy by John Le Carré  The Fog by James Herbert The Continuous Katherine Mortenhoe by D. G. Compton J.G. Ballard Japan Sinks by Sakyo Komatsu, translated by Michael Gallagher Plessy V. Ferguson Mesmerism, Vitalism, Magnetism H.G. Wells William James Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade Martin Delany Black Panther Hazel V. Carby's edited collection of Hopkins' Work Deborah E. McDowell MIT Radium Age series Minister Faust George S. Schuyler's Black Empire Marcus Garvey H. Rider Haggard's She Geoffrey Sanborn's "The Pleasure of Its Company: Of One Blood and the Potentials of Plagiarism" Edward Bulwer-Lytton Our Stand On Zanzibar Episode W.E.B. DuBois & double consciousness Mississippi Quarterly article on race in the Southern Reach trilogy Cora Jean Moten’s “The Creeping Thing”

Worldcon episode time: we’ve got interviews, we’ve got a coffee report, we’ve got an only-mildly chaotic group podcast attempt! Podcasts, reviews, interviews, essays, and more at the Ancillary Review of Books. Please consider supporting ARB’s Patreon! Guests & Collaborators: Thomas Ha Alex Kingsley Frauke Uhlenbruch Marshall Ryan Maresca & Cass Morris of Worldbuilding for Masochists Kevin Anderson & Lori Anderson of Hugo, Girl! John Coxon of Octothorpe Helen Montgomery Sam Kim of Kumquat Host: Jake Casella Brookins Music by Giselle Gabrielle Garcia Additional sounds & music: The Los Angeles Metro “Surf Shimmy” by Kevin Macleod “Through the Woods We Ran” by Vindsvept And the cool theremin sounds Kevin made for Hugo, Girl! Artwork by Rob Patterson Opening poem by Bhartṛhari, translated by John Brough References: Thomas Ha’s Uncertain Sons The Best of Jeffrey Ford and Pandemonium Waltz Steve Rasnic Tem & Brian Evenson Michel Siffre, French cave-and-sleep explorer J.S. Fields Zoe Franznick DePaul Pop Culture Conference Sabrina Mittermeier: The Routledge Handbook of Star Trek and Fighting For The Future Alien vs. Predator, Hellraiser, Dogma The Bible in Motion, edited by Rhonda Burnette-Bletsch Memory Alpha Michael Crichton’s Jurassic Park Chuck, Earth: Final Conflict, Scavengers Reign, Battleship The Speculative Literature Foundation and their Deep Dish reading series HWA (Horror Writers Association) Playground Chicago Strong Branch SFWA (Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers Association) Goblin Market Mary Robinette Kowal, Curtis Chen Alexy on Bluesky & Instagram Space Wizard publishing Loquat coffee Artist Devon Sinead Arboretum and Botanical Garden at Cal State Fullerton E.G. Condé Dungeon Crawler Carl by Matt Dinniman Uketsu’s Strange Houses, Strange Pictures,Strange Buildings, translated by Jim Rion Jo Walton Lightspeed and Reactor Alasdair Stuart & Marguerite Kenner (of projects like The Full Lid and Escape Artists) Liza Groen Trombi of Locus Magazine Cube Gene Wolfe The Prestige by Christopher Priest The Gods Themselves by Isaac Asimov Green Marsby Kim Stanley Robinson Widow’s Bay Fonda Lee, Shannon Chakraborty, Gabriella Buba SFF Addicts Robert Shearman’s Tiny Deaths, Ian Mond’s pick for a recent episode Nerds of a Feather

A deeply strange and arresting short novel, The Water Statues defies easy categorization but has a powerful and cerebral atmosphere, putting us in mind of a lot of other works—including Clarke’s Piranesi. Langdon Hickman, last unshriven host of Death // Sentence, joins to discuss. Podcasts, reviews, interviews, essays, and more at the Ancillary Review of Books. Please consider supporting ARB’s Patreon! Guest: Langdon Hickman Title: The Water Statues by Fleur Jaeggy, translated by Gini Alhedeff  Host:Jake Casella Brookins Music byGiselle Gabrielle Garcia Artwork byRob Patterson Opening poem by Bhartṛhari, translated by John Brough References: Recent episodes with other Death // Sentence hosts (Sisyphean with Gareth Watkins & Diaspora with Eden Kupermintz) Solvej Balle’s On the Calculation of Volume Roberto Bolaño W.G. Sebald'sAusterlitz & The Rings of Saturn Hugo Nominees, UKLG Nominees Frank Herbert’s Dune Holism vs reductivist materialism Object oriented ontology & speculative realists Nick Land, Graham Harman, Timothy Morton Set theory Jacques Derrida on “logos” Greg Egan's Incandescence & related stories Alan Moore & Dave Gibbons’ Watchmen Kim Stanley Robin’s Aurora (AMOT episode w/ Hilary Strang) Jayaprakash Satyamurthy of Djinn and Miskatonic M.R. James Eugene Thacker’s An Ideal For Living Susanna Clarke’s Piranesi(AMOT episode w/Misha Grifka Wander) & Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell Hemingway’s “Iceberg theory” Lydia Davis, Samuel Beckett Decadent & Aesthetic movements Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner Negative Capability Keats’ letter to Richard Woodhouse, October 1818 Philip K. Dick, Ursula K. Le Guin, Sofia Samatar David Michell’s Cloud Atlas (AMOT episode with Abigail Nussbaum) William Butler Yeats’ “The Second Coming” Jorge Luis Borges’ “Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote” Hilary Putnam The Caretaker by Doon Arbus Death // Sentence Treble Zine Consequence of Sound Langdon's newsletter

More famous for his science fiction and dark fantasy, Ray Bradbury also tried his hand at crime fiction, with often-fascinating results. Writer, critic, and editor Aigner Loren Wilson talks us through the strange flourishes and tonal experiments of Killer, Come Back To Me! Podcasts, reviews, interviews, essays, and more at the Ancillary Review of Books. Please consider supporting ARB’s Patreon! Guest: Aigner Loren Wilson Title: Killer, Come Back To Me by Ray Bradbury Host:Jake Casella Brookins Music byGiselle Gabrielle Garcia Artwork byRob Patterson Opening poem by Bhartṛhari, translated by John Brough References: The Possession of Alba Díaz & Vampires of El Norte by Isabel Cañas Leslie Feinberg’s Stone Butch Blues The Ship of Death by Kyle Winkler Adrian Tchaikovsky's Shroud Ray Bradbury: The Life of Fiction by Jonathan R. Eller & William F. Touponce Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett Dandelion Wine, Fahrenheit 451, The Illustrated Man, The Martian Chronicles Damon Knight "The Smallest Assassin" Leigh Brackett The Chucky franchise Frank Miller’s Sin City, Shane Black’s The Nice Guys Yestermorrow: Obvious Answers to Impossible Futures "Dead Men Rise Up never" "Where Everything Ends" "The Town Where No One Got Off" "The Utterly Perfect Murder" The Bradbury Chronicles by Sam Weller "Punishment Without Crime" "The Whole Town’s Sleeping" & "At Midnight in the Month of June" "The Women" from I Sing the Body Electric "And So Died Riabouchinska" "The Smiling People" "The Fruit at the Bottom of the Bowl" "Some Live Like Lazarus" Octavia E. Butler Darker Times Writing Skins, Aigner’s newsletter Aigner's website Scene Builder

In this con-coverage episode, Casella talks to folks at Readercon in Boston, including Lisa from Narrated, author Sara S. Messenger, and editor Carl Engle-Laird. We also visit Porter Square Books, an indie bookstore that has recently launched their own book review. Podcasts, reviews, interviews, essays, and more at the Ancillary Review of Books. Please consider supporting ARB’s Patreon! Host:Jake Casella Brookins Music byGiselle Gabrielle Garcia Artwork byRob Patterson Opening poem by Bhartṛhari, translated by John Brough References: Readercon Porter Square Books Lisa from the Narrated podcast The Hugo Awards Elizabeth Bear’s White Space series C.J. Cherryh & Lois McMaster Bujold Sara S. Messenger “Jennifer’s Daughter” in Nightmare Magazine “When We Loved Giants” in Lightspeed Karel Čapek Hope Mirrlees’ Lud-in-the-Mist (good AMOT episode on that!) AMOT episode on Ready Player One Clark Seanor’s “Recycled Air: Wayfarers and the Tyranny of the Everyday” in Strange Horizons Lovestruck Books in last year’s Readercon episode Katherine @ Porter Square Books K.A. Applegate’s Animorphsseries Chuck Tingle Ann Patchett’s Whistler Sour Cherry by Natalia Theodoridou Roseanna Pendlebury’s review of Sour Cherry Sunny Moraine (from our Pattern Recognition episode) Will McMahon Scott Edelman’s Eating the Fantastic podcast Benjamin Rosenbaum (from our Fire Logic episode) Carl Engle-Laird, editor at Tor Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir The Saint of Bright Doors by Vajra Chandrasekera Notes from a Regicide by Isaac Fellman The Ursula K. Le Guin Prize for Fiction Jon Bois’ 17776 Cambridge Porchfest & the Good Trouble Brass Band Gracenote & Broadsheet coffee Thomas Wensma has an interview with Australian barista champ Jack Simpson & coffee farmer Juan Pablo Campos about the Ombligon cultivar at Perfect Daily Grind, if that caught your ear Bujold’s Vorkosigan series & Barrayar Josh Cook of Porter Square Books & the Porter Square Review of Books PSB’s Bluesky Josh’s articles at LitHub Poly Barton’s What Am I, A Deer? Grace Krilanovich’s The Orange Eats Creeps & Acid Green Velvet

Literary agent and Print Run podcaster extraordinaire Laura Zats is on to talk about a novel that is the most urban fantasy you can imagine, and yet seems to run towards different traditions and ideas the closer you examine it—Robin McKinley’s award-winning but under-discussed Sunshine.   Podcasts, reviews, interviews, essays, and more at the Ancillary Review of Books.   Please consider supporting ARB’s Patreon! Guest: Laura Zats Title: Sunshine by Robin McKinley Host: Jake Casella Brookins Music by Giselle Gabrielle Garcia Artwork by Rob Patterson Opening poem by Bhartṛhari, translated by John Brough References: Christopher Buehlman’s Blacktongue Thief & Between Two Fires Peter Rock's Makeshift Emily St. John Mandel’s Station Eleven Totally not the heist film Oceans 11 Newberry Honor & Mythopoeic Award Charlaine Harris’s The Southern Vampire Mysteries/Sookie Stackhouse/True Blood series Kim Harrison Bram Stoker's Dracula Twilight & Buffy the Vampire Slayer Jim Butcher’s Dresden Files series Dunning-Kruger effect McKinley's Deerskin Editor Sharyn November & the Firebird imprint Charles De Lint, Anne Rice, Anita Blake "Contemporary Fantasy" Stephen Graham Jones Grady Hendrix’s The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires & Horrorstör Sheridan Le Fanu’s Carmilla Matt Kirkland’s “Dracula Daily” RS Benedict’s “Everyone is Beautiful and No One is Horny” Lee Mandelo's The Woods All Black Indra Das's The Devourers John Wyndham's The Day of the Triffids The Print Run podcast Erik Hane's “The Fandom Strain”

Critic & reviewer Ian Mond talks us through Tiny Deaths, a very funny and frequently morbid collection. We also think bigger: about the place and status of humor and seriousness in genre literature, and why non-genre imprints and translated literature might be places to look for this energy. Podcasts, reviews, interviews, essays, and more at the Ancillary Review of Books. Please consider supporting ARB’s Patreon! Guest: Ian Mond Title: Tiny Deaths by Robert Shearman Host:Jake Casella Brookins Music byGiselle Gabrielle Garcia Artwork byRob Patterson Opening poem by Bhartṛhari, translated by John Brough References: The Writer and The Critic Tayari Jones’ Kin Boyhood by David Keenan Centreouropa by Vicente Luis Mora, translated by Rahul Bery Edward Royston’s Transgressing Time Christopher Priest's The Recollections Priest & Allan’s The Illuminated Man Sturgeon's Law (“90% of everything is crap”) Dr. Who & Stephen King Gallifrey One convention Donald Barthelme, Ishmael Reed, T.C. Boyle, Kelly Link Lisa Heschong’s Thermal Delight in Architecture Rachel Khong’s My Dear You The Simpsons Blindness by José Saramago, Julio Cortázar Shearman’s Love Songs for the Shy and Cynical, Everyone’s Just So So Special, and We All Hear Stories in the Dark “Chimes At Midnight” and “The Holy Terror” Douglas Adams Machine of Death, edited by Ryan North Jon Stone’s The Monster At The End Of This Book Sofia Samatar’s A Stranger in Olondria Groundhog Day, directed by Harold Ramis James Morrow's Towing Jehovah & Only Begotten Daughter Robert Heinlein’s “All You Zombies” Leyna Krow's Sinkhole and Other Stories Ed Park's An Oral History of Atlantis Michael Swanwick & Jeffrey Ford collections "Gate 9" in Pandemonium Waltz Hilary Leichter, Sayaka Murata, Liliana Colanzi Translated Hugo Initiative Words Without Borders Locus Award for Best Translated Novel Isaac Fellman's Notes From A Regicide Incandescent by Emily Tesh Sean McTiernan's SFUltra Locus Magazine Ian's Substack & Facebook & Goodreads